Electronic Music Terms Dictionary

Featured Articles & Tutorials:

Ableton Live, Performance, Composition, Burning Man. Want your music played at Burning Man 2010? There is a new interactive video, music, and fire installation called Syzygryd that is taking Ableton Live music submissions. Get the Syzygryd Music Developers Kit.

Ableton Help, Ableton FAQ, MIDI, VST Plugin. Having trouble using MIDI files with Ableton Live? Do you want to use a MIDI file you downloaded from the internet within Ableton Live? Then read on. For this lesson you will need:

Ableton Live, Free, Keyboard Shortcuts, Workflow, Tools, Automation. Microsoft Windows users can now expand their Ableton Live workflow tool set. Independent developers have released tools to add extremely useful shortcuts to Live. You should grab these tools if you’re running Windows and you want to develop and perform music as fast as possible using Ableton Live.

Electronic Music Production, Plugins, VST, Melodyne. Celemony Melodyne is about to release a revolutionary tool for producers and remixers. It’s called Direct Note Access (DNA) and it allows you to separate polyphonic audio into adjustable MIDI data. It can take an audio loop that plays chords, separate out the individual notes, and then adjust their pitches, volumes, onsets, and durations. The software is truly jaw-dropping and will no doubt be as useful and prevalent as Antares Autotune. Before seeing this in action, I would have told you that this feat is mathematically impossible.

Compression, Mixing, Side Chain Compression, House, Tutorial, Oscilloscope. In the old days, mixing engineers would study the volume meters as they danced along the console. By playing back well-mixed songs, these early pioneers learned how to read proper song dynamics. This skill is invaluable when trying to understand and utilize compression. This article discusses a modern approach to developing the same talent cultivated in the old masters: the ability to create pleasing dynamic compression. For this tutorial you will need:

VST, Plugin, Free, Mixing, Oscilloscope.A good oscilloscope is useful in many contexts: synthesizer programming, understanding phase cancellation, compression, etc. Lucky for you, there is a fantastic free digital storage oscilloscope from Bram at SmartElectronix. This plug-in can be dropped anywhere in your DAW’s signal path for quick and easy analysis. You can use this tool to fix all kinds of dynamics-related issues.

Pear Cable has been challenged by The Amazing Randi, the well-known skeptic and paranormal debunker. He has offered 1 million dollars if they can prove in a scientific experiment that their $7,000 Anjou speaker cables sound any better than the relatively cheap Monster Cables. I’m very happy to see someone confronting the absurd claims made by speaker cable manufacturers. Remember, music-lovers listen to music and audiophiles listen to speakers.

Nothing beats the 808 drum machine for a solid, club-worthy low end kick. Its sound is immediately recognizable in all styles of dance music. It is an essential component of every electronic music producers gear collection. For years, musicians have paid large sums of money for the real thing. But, thanks to the D16 Group you can get Nepheton, a VST instrument that faithfully recreates the 808 sound. Best of all, instead of samples, this VST synthesizes the sounds. This allows you the same sound design flexibility enjoyed by owners of the actual hardware.

House, Drum n Bass, Producers. These award-winning producers deserve a special notice here on SonicTransfer. As professional Ableton artists, RTHM’s music demonstrates an enormous range of production tricks. They have created tracks for such talent as Mark Farina, DJ Sneak, The Sound Republic, Joey Youngman, DJ Heather, and many more. All of this experience has made RTHM exceptional music producers.

SonicTransfer is lucky enough to have shared countless hours of studio time with RTHM, and many of their techniques can be found throughout this site. By following the SonicTransfer program, you learn the best production techniques used by professional electronic music producers. For more information on RTHM, click here visit the RTHM home page.